charcuterie

I tried a new variation on the neck roast from a deer I took this year. I always make it a point to harvest the neck roast from any deer I take and I take the time to get all of it and keep it as the biggest piece I can. If it comes out […] Read More

Finally. I’ve been wanting to try a deer heart pastrami for a while now. I got it done… and did the final hot smoke and steaming today. The recipe was taken from Michael Pendley’s venison pastrami recipe on RealTree.com. I mainly went with his ingredients and followed his procedure, but used two deer hearts and […] Read More

While going through the freezer the other night making space for hunting season, I collected a number of pig trotters that were begging to have something done with them. I decided on pork pie. The trotters would be cleaned and boiled to make an aspic for the jelly. I depended on a mash of recipes […] Read More

Rabbit and morel sausage… one of my seasonal favorites. Seasonal because you must have fresh morels, and non-freezer-burnt rabbit. Deboning a rabbit is some pretty tedious work too. Whether you are harvesting your own rabbits, or buying them from a breeder, have that rabbit ready for when the morels pop! This has to be hands […] Read More

Mortadella originates from Bologna, Italy. It’s nicknamed “la grassa,” which means fat. Mortadella has been made for the last five hundred years, yet many Americans haven’t heard of it. When told it’s Italian bologna, they think of the stuff we ate as kids (but stopped eating when we grew into adults and found out how […] Read More

Lately, I have been curing what’s in season, and right now, it’s hunting season so this series of posts will feature venison. All of these products are cured. It requires an environment where you can reliably control temperature and humidity. Once you have the environment, and the basic knowledge of safely curing meat, the recipes […] Read More

Lately, I have been curing what’s in season, and right now, it’s hunting season so this series of posts will feature venison. All of these products are cured. It requires an environment where you can reliably control temperature and humidity. Once you have the environment, and the basic knowledge of safely curing meat, the recipes […] Read More

This post has been edited and updated with subsequent pictures and info that I have gleaned over the years. — Hunting season means deer hearts are plentiful. It’s common for friends to drop off their hearts to me and tell me to do with them what I may. My original article wrote about curing what’s in […] Read More

I tread lightly on this terrain as this is the first prosciutto I have ever made. Not only that, but there are so many styles, and so many beliefs when it comes to drying a whole ham. You apparently can’t just call a ham a prosciutto (singular for prosciutti) because a real prosciutto starts with […] Read More

A good primer for those delving into charcuterie is to make pancetta. There are several styles and “arrotolata” simply means rolled. This to me is the more familiar style and the one I chose because I like trussing up the meat. Here, I’m just adding to the many articles on the internet on making pancetta. […] Read More